Vehicle control systems are increasingly using data obtained from different sources in order to automatically control features of a vehicle. Local data from a vehicle sensing module is used to control various vehicle features such as automated power steering and automatic brake activation. The local data can include data obtained from an object detection unit including a camera and radar and data obtained from a vehicle to vehicle communications unit, which can be processed to determine upon automated vehicle control features to avoid collision with objects such as pedestrians, road infrastructure and other vehicles. These different sources of local data are processed separately, requiring some form of control arbitration to determine, for example, how to prioritize and implement control commands produced from separate processing schemes.
An additional complication lies in a proposal for vehicle control systems to take into account remote data received from a cloud server. The remote data can be formulated based on a collation of a crowd of local data uploaded from many vehicles to the cloud server. The current proposals provide a further separate control system that will either run independently from the vehicle control systems based on local data or will require an extra layer of arbitration.
Whilst vehicle control systems have significant data processing capabilities, there is a limit to the amount of data that can be processed with the requisite speed. The seamed layers of processing and arbitration of local and remote data in the prior art add to processing inefficiency and place limitations on capabilities of the vehicle control system to manage further data sources.
Accordingly, a need exists for integrated management of data from local and remote data sources. Further, a platform is required at the cloud server side and the vehicle side that is able to provide feasible data management and efficient processing to take into account the local and remote data for controlling a vehicle. Furthermore, other desirable features and characteristics of the present invention will become apparent from the subsequent detailed description and the appended claims, taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings and the foregoing technical field and background.